Features

The information listed here is based off of http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/Choosing_a_SWORD_program

Here are listed the things you can expect for DBST2, which you can compare against DBST1.

Operating Systems and Portability

Although it hasn't been tested, DBST2 should be able to run on Windows XP. It should not, however, be able to run on systems before Windows XP. Windows Vista, 7, and Windows 8, it should run as expected and tested.

Development started on Linux, and i hope for it to end in Linux as well. So, definitely, DBST2 will work as it should on Linux.

Unfortunately, i don't own an Apple computer, nor do i ever plan on owning one, so i have no idea if it'll run, let alone compile, on a Mac. Nevertheless, if a Linux-like development environment could be mirrored on a Mac, then it should be able to compile and run fine.

DBST2 is not designed for portable devices, except laptops, and i don't plan on bringing it over to anything other than "desktop."

Although DBST2 can be installed to run from a USB drive, it would still store user information on the host system.

Module Support

Daily Devotions will eventually be supported through plug-ins. Commentaries will likewise be supported through plug-ins.

Testament and Book introductions probably won't be supported.

Although DBST1 allowed users to write notes on verses, i'm not sure i'll be implementing such a feature for DBST2, except perhaps by user requests.

Basic right-to-left support is implemented.

Footnotes, scriptural references, cross references, morphological text, strong's numbers, and Christ's words in red are all supported, assuming you have modules that support these things and that can be referenced against these things.

Deutero-canonical books (i.e. alternate versification) is supported for modules that have them.

Module Management

Support for unlocking modules is there, but checking whether or not the key provided is valid is not currently supported but planned, and so the support is currently disabled.

Local repository support is planned, but currently only remote repository listing is supported. The ability to manually add a remote repository is planned, too.

User is warned before accessing remote repositories. Currently, accepting to continue is not saved to user settings, and i probably won't save it to user settings.

The user is able to sort modules by name, type and language. Other sorting capabilities may be added, but are not planned. Note, not all languages are localized, but that's a work-in-progress.

Modules are downloaded the same way as DBST1, and so you currently are not able to continue using the rest of the application until either the downloads are finished or are canceled.

Any status updates on the modules, whether installed or not, require action from the user. That is, there are no notifications for the user concerning module updates, and none are planned.

Image module support is planned.

Alternative versification is supported as of r18.

Layouts and Navigation

The user interface, unlike DBST1, is not adjustable. For DBST2 we wanted to avoid cluttering up the user interface and we wanted to achieve a more professional and consistent look. Our design goals for the user interface seek to imitate how a user experiences "offline" reading in the real world, in a user-friendly way. This, to me, means having no verse-only displays; i.e. you will read books by chapters only, and you will read only one book (i.e. SWORD modules) at a time even though you may have multiple books (i.e. SWORD modules) "opened." The reasoning behind a chapter-only, one-book-visible-at-any-one-time, display is because a person can only ever keep track of one book at a time, one chapter at a time, and one verse at a time, etc. So i saw no need to waste space for impractical things. Indeed, if any parallel displays will be seen, it would be through plug-ins. Parallel verses is supported through the Parallel Verses plug-in for releases greater than r18.

Navigating between chapters is as simple as clicking "Next" and "Previous." For versions r18 or greater, you can manually change the chapter by clicking on the chapter title.

For Bible and Generic books, the module content is displayed through a web browser. This allows for greater customization of the module content and JavaScript modules to be loaded dynamically, and for module content to be displayed more accurately. Automatically loading all JavaScript files in the js folder is planned.

Searching through Modules

Searching is currently only implemented for the currently active and opened module. The search form has also been simplified and should be pretty straight-forward. For versions greater than r18, double-clicking on a search result will navigate you to the chapter of the result.

Bookmarks, Tags and Notes

For versions greater than r18, bookmarking verses is supported through the Versemark plug-in. Anything beyond this is up in the air.

Session Management

All important things are stored for later retrieval in a settings file. These things include: default module settings, library repository settings, opened modules and their current chapters, etc. This, however, excludes some UI states, search results, etc. All of these things are not backwards compatible with DBST1.

Help System

I like to believe in designs that are intuitive and therefore do not require any documentation to use or get started. However, UI/UX design doesn't always meet every possibility, and so some help systems were set in place until a better design can be thought of. Indeed, the UI design of DBST2 is a constant work-in-progress.

Misc

Text-to-speech might be implemented, and it may only be implemented for Windows.

I don't plan on supporting a customizable UI, except where JavaScript is concerned.